Synchronization Basics

Timing is an essential element to all test, control, and design applications and should be a key consideration in any system. It defines the measurement capabilities of systems and is constrained by variables such as distance.

Timing and synchronization technologies allow the correlation or coordination of events in time and maximize the value the system provides. The end goal may be to time system events to a known standard (for example, sampling at a given frequency) or to time events relative to one another or in response to one another. In data acquisition, these events can be multiple samples or samples between multiple systems. Timing is important because it helps you coordinate or compare the acquired data signals with time, so you can relate the signals to each other.